


In the shadow of Southwark Bridge

by Kastaka



Category: Neil Gaiman - Neverwhere
Genre: Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2007
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-14 23:32:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kastaka/pseuds/Kastaka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>With many thanks to Drusilla Rain for her last-minute betaing services. Sorry it's not so much of an epic as last year, but I didn't have a handy conference to write this one at.</p>
    </blockquote>





	In the shadow of Southwark Bridge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [corialis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/corialis/gifts).



> With many thanks to Drusilla Rain for her last-minute betaing services. Sorry it's not so much of an epic as last year, but I didn't have a handy conference to write this one at.

 

 

_The Marquis de Carabas had long since traded away the memories of his childhood - the suburban home, the worried parents, the after-school detentions, even the final escape from mundanity into his first adventure. The Earl, born and bred in London Below, had been pathetically grateful for them at first, but was less enthralled at the price that the Marquis finally demanded. And neither of them ever found McAvity again._

* * *

It was winter in London, and even Larry Miller was thinking of admitting that he had made a mistake. The train ride here had been pretty good, swiping the complementary biscuits destined for first class on the way to the toilet, dodging between carriages to avoid the ticket inspectors until he'd had a lucky break with some daft tourist who'd left his ticket out on his seat when he wandered off on some errand of his own. But while London in winter was much more hospitable than anywhere in the vicinity of where he'd been born and raised, it was still bloody freezing and deeply unfriendly. Sure, there were bums huddled around burning things, here and there, mostly under bridges, but they were mostly pretty evil-looking and glared at his fresh young face as he sidled up to assess their possible level of generosity with the heat they were generating.

He had just been chased off a doorstep by a grey-haired guy and his vicious dog, who he kept on a piece of string so frayed and tattered that it was obviously only due to extreme caution by the dog that it hadn't broken the leash and destroyed the illusion of control that its master was enjoying, and was walking along beside the river, in the shadow of the Tate Modern, one of the public museums that he had hoped might be a fantastic shelter and probably would have been if it wasn't three in the morning. He had his head down, looking for dropped change - even a couple of coins would let him into the showers at King's Cross and let him continue his respectable tourist act for a little longer - but the movement in the river caught his eye.

At first he thought it was just more refuse floating down the ugly grey river, but there was something about the fitful movement of the hessian sack that made him think again. Something self-propelled was in that sack.

While he could still remember the incident, he had come up with all kind of excuses, depending on who he was talking to. It might have been edible. It had, in fact, been fantastically grateful in all manner of useful ways. It might have been a little boy like he had been then, and he'd want someone else to do the same for him. But it was three in the morning and mostly he just hadn't been thinking. Hopping over the low wall to the muddy rocks below, stashing his bag somewhere he could keep an eye on it, shedding his shoes (in a hopelessly naive manner - he would never have walked barefoot in London, much less somewhere he couldn't see where he was putting his feet, had he been just a little older and wiser, whatever the chances of his shoes rotting on his feet afterwards) and hoiking up his trouser-legs, he waded out after the sack.

Soon he was swimming, but fortunately his expensive prep school had run many courses in lifesaving in their private swimming pool, and under the water you couldn't hear people yell at you. Actual clothes, especially 3am-in-Winter clothes, were a lot heavier and more awkward than the pajamas he'd worn to such occasions, but he had the stubbonness of youth on his side. The bag fought and kicked as he grabbed it, a muffled noise of distress coming from inside, so he hissed "Shut up and hold still, I'm rescuing you". He didn't expect it to work, but it did anyway, and he returned to the bank without incident, shivering as he clumsily undid the simple knot in the wet hessian.

Dumping out the contents of the bag on the ground, he discovered that it was a straggly-looking ginger tom, underfed and mangy.

"There's not even good eating on you," he muttered, disgustedly.

"Thought you were rescuing me?" replied the cat, sarcastically.

Larry Miller did a double-take and then looked around for the source of the words, which were obviously thrown by someone attempting to make a fool of him.

"Down here, stupid," said the cat.

There were no other obvious interlocuters, but Larry wasn't quite ready to accept a talking cat yet. It was much more likely, he decided, that he was totally insane and hallucinating the talking cat. On the other hand, that meant there was no good course of action, so he may as well talk to it.

Crouching down (in an attempt to make eye contact on its level), Larry tried to work out what you said to a hallucination of a talking cat. "Yes," he said at length, "yes, I did rescue you. Hope you're grateful."

"Fantastically," said the cat. "In fact, I would go so far as to venture that I might owe you a favour for such a service, if only to encourage similar behaviour should you find me in such a situation in the future."

Great, thought Larry, a favour from a talking cat that I just hallucinated. But there was another part of his mind, a part that was just waking up, that was already thinking of the possibilities for such a gift.

"And where should I find you, to call in such a favour?" asked Larry.

"Oh, just ask for McAvity," said the cat. "It'll get back to me. And of course, I never miss a market."

Unfortunately for Larry Miller, a feral child with matted hair swung themselves over the wall at that point, and started investigating his bag. By the time he had finished shooing her off, McAvity had disappeared, as had the sack, leaving no sign of their encounter other than the fact that he was still sopping wet. Larry picked up his shoes and socks, and made for the shadow of Southwark Bridge to change clothes in the best approximation of privacy he could muster.

* * *

She tossed the cans of spray-paint to him with a conspiratorial wink, and fled into the darkness, leaving him standing there, blinking stupidly at the direction from which she'd come.

It had been some time since he had rescued a cat from a river, and he had to admit, McAvity seemed to have already done him something of a favour. Since their conversation, he hadn't once been moved on by the police, his skills at pickpocketing and shoplifting appeared to have improved immensely, the other tramps hadn't bothered him, and in general he was living pretty high on the hog for a runaway kid in London. He slept under a roof every night by following people into buildings, slipping past security guards, and gained free admission to all of London's sights and wonders just by walking straight in. Apart from the incident at the Underground station, where he had barely managed to escape from some kind of black swirling monstrosity, the details of which he was unclear on, his life was perfect.

So he wasn't too happy to be left staring down a couple of rather unpleasent-looking men in suits, one with rather incongruous knuckle-dusters, even on the behalf of the first pretty girl who'd given him a second look since he'd come here.

"If you wouldn't mind," said the one armed with a vicious-looking umbrella, one of those proper old types with the hefty wooden shaft and silvery metal tip, holding one hand out for the spraypaint cans that he was clutching protectively to his chest.

"Aren't yours," he muttered sulkily, drawing on a stock of bravado he had not previously been aware of.

"And I'm sure that such a charming young man as yourself wouldn't actually, bold-facedly, claim any kind of actual ownership over these items either, hmm?" asked the umbrella man. Behind him the man with knuckle-dusters cracked his knuckles in a traditionally ominous fashion.

"Don't see why I should give them to you," he added, stalling for time.

"I am afraid that my associate here," - more knuckle-cracking - "might have some objections to the manner in which these cans have recently been used."

"S'true, though, isn't it?" said Miller, bluffing madly. He had a sudden stroke of inspiration. "Anyway, s'not my message."

"Ah, and now we get to the crux of the matter," said the umbrella man. Handing the umbrella off to the other man, he squatted down, so that he was looking Miller directly in the eyes. "Who's message, pray tell, was it?"

"McAvity's," said Miller, letting the umbrella man have it both barrels right in the eyes, and turning to sprint in the same direction as the girl had earlier, trusting to his small frame to make a quicker getaway than the knuckle-duster man was capable of following.

Behind him, there was a conversation.

"Should I get him?"

"No, no, let him go," said the umbrella man, surprisingly unruffled for someone who had just been sprayed yellow and red in the eyes. "He's hardly worth chasing at present. Let him grow a little. There'll be good hunting on that one, mark my words."

"But what about our principal?"

"They have their answer well enough."

* * *

"Hey, thanks for that," said the girl as she dropped down into one of his favourite dens in the back rooms of the Victoria and Albert. "Can I have my spraypaints back?"

"You can when you tell me what that was all about," he replied sullenly, not even bothering to be surprised.

"Cheer up, grumpypants," she said, "you're one of the gang now. What should I call you, anyway?"

Larry thought about giving his real name, but felt it was wholly inadequate to the occasion. There was something final in the air, something about this meeting which made the grey and uncaring world that he had been moving through like a shadow, and the whole train of baggage that came with the name his parents gave him, seem meaningless, not quite real, no longer relevant. If he was to have a name here, it should come from his story here, not from the past that was receding from him. And then he remembered a children's book, and hastily suppressed a most unbecoming giggle.

"You can call me... the Marquis de Carabas."

 


End file.
